Ergo, Sum
by satirical
Summary: He’s trapped in a mirror, and can only come out at night. She's too scarred from the War to leave her flat. Sorting hat, juxtapose this. [DHr, WIP]
1. Act Zero

**Ergo, Sum**

-

_Act Zero_

She's Standing on Crumbling Cliffs

_-_

_Third Tuesday, August_

Ron comes in on Tuesdays while I'm not awake yet. He brews tea and sets out marmalade. When the clock strikes ten-forty-five he comes into my room and wakes me. I have to rub at my arms while I sit in bed for at least ten minutes. I can hear his weathered slippers down the hall of my apartment. He shuffles when he walks, I note. His once sprightly step lags.

I push myself out of bed. My room is decadent in gloom. The curtains block the late summer sun, tinting the walls myrtle green. The dark furniture sit silent and sullen. I slip on a robe and drag a brush through my tangled hair; I know it's impossible to tame, but I have to try anyway. Soon it's my feet that go down that calloused floor, past rows of stretched shadows and flickers of light, to emerge into the kitchen. The usual tea is set in those brown mugs Harry got me that Last Christmas. The usual scones are piled haphazardly on a plate. I wonder why Ron is doing this; he knows he's a horrible cook.

He comes out from the bathroom rubbing his large hands down the sides of his jeans. His fingers are gnarled like the ugly tree branches that line the driveway in the fall. The skin of his forearms, down to his yellowed nails, is blistered and blackened from when he reached into the Fire. He smiles at me, and three years are lifted from his face. We're only thirty—I want to say to him—so why do we look like we're dying?

He tells me that today I'm going out. Today I'm going out onto the streets of London, today I need to brave the world. I refuse—I want to hide, to cry, to go back to bed. I don't know where my weakness comes from. I don't know why I can't go outside, only that an irrational fear builds up toward the back of my mouth and down my throat when I think about the sun, about the Muggles, and about the Last Days. Everything outside reminds me of the Last Days now, I tell him. Everything external is synonymous with death and decay.

'It hasn't been so bad since Fred and George beat back Parkinson and Nott from the city,' he says. The deep grooves around his mouth lengthened. His skin, from this distance, looked like ash. 'Hermione, you can't stay bottled up in this flat forever.'

Yes I can. I warm my hands on the ceramic cup as he spreads marmalade onto a scone. I can do as I'd like. I will do as I like. The silence is laden with secrets. He seems to want to tell me something.

I spot the old typewriter by the window, inky black in a beige room. 'Is that—for me?'

I can see some of the old Ron when he smiles. He is suddenly boyish, blotched and freckled skin aside. His hand travels up to the back of his neck and his ears faintly pink as he chuckles. _It's for you to write your liberating manifestos on._

I inch over toward the machine, unable to believe my eyes. Computers and other electronic equipment go haywire inside my magical building; a typewriter, being purely mechanical, is able to work. I run my hand over the keys, gingerly sliding a slip of paper into the slitted opening. 'Thank you, Ron.' The labeling on the J key, I notice, has gently faded away. The previous owner, I surmised, must have loved to tap that as she wrote.

My once sprightly digits take forever to begin working. When I do, the typewriter cracks and groans its way into motion. Three minutes later, I have a title page, an idea, a heartbeat.

**BRITISH MAGICAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT**  
_drafted in honor of the boy who should have lived_

Ron comes to sit by me on the sepia loveseat. 'Hermione, he says, his hand on my shoulder, 'you have to go out. A demagogue needs to be a witch of the people. Go find the people again.'

'Why did they send you to ask me, Ron?' I pulled out my title page and stared at him. 'Why not Ginny or Luna or Neville? Why do you insist on altering our Tuesdays?'

Ron snapped. 'You're not dead yet, Hermione, so don't act like you are.'

I bit my tongue. I couldn't look at him anymore—I remembered the wretched green light, the sound of serpents hissing, the putrid scent of burning flesh. I press my lips together and hold my head in my hands; I could taste the vomit that threatened at the back of my mouth.

Ron's hands were ravaged and he'd aged beyond his years. But I had suffered more. My face was battle-scored, twisted and tattooed by scars. In my tough hair ran streaks of gray. I had lost part of one of my earlobes; the loss still haunted me whenever I tucked my hair behind my ear, so I'd touch neither hair nor face. It was so strange, because I was never vain before. Now vanity, among other things, was my jailor.

I had no mirrors in the apartment—I feared them. I feared, by association, myself.

'Ron,' I said finally. I couldn't bear to look at him; I could feel his hand was trembling and I knew he was shaking. 'Ron, just go. Go home. I'll be all right.'

'I'm sorry, Hermy.'

'Go back. Report to Terry.' He needed no further urging—he grabbed his cloak from the doorknob. I wasn't surprised by his brisk departure. He had been bothered by our conversation today. Normally, it was about the past, about third year or that one summer he kissed me behind the Burrow. I wish we were so simple now. I could tell he still loves me, or at least a part of him does, the part that's not mature and withered and dying with the rest of the world.

I'm dying too. It's just easier to forget it when I'm hidden in my rooms, lost in my woork.

_The boy who should have lived. _At least, I bit my tongue, at least Lord Voldemort had died with him. At least the end for him was absolute—he'd done what he needed to do. A tear slipped, dropping onto the Y key of my typewriter. It wasn't fair at all, I thought, fighting to control myself. It wasn't fair that the very course of his life had been determined for him. Perhaps if he had lived he would be with Ginny now, and she wouldn't have turned into the harsh Fury she now was. Perhaps if he had lived Nott wouldn't have taken power after the Dark Lord's death and a second shadow would not have swooped over Britain.

Perhaps if he had lived, I wouldn't be here, paralyzed with fear.

I start typing, start furiously etching out ideas on the paper Ron'd left me. I fantasize that my ideologies and underground manuscripts would spread a brilliant revolution fostered by words. I could see, in my mind's tired eye, a peaceful future: house-elves equal with wizards, purebloods holding hands with muggle-borns, centaurs and wizards sharing knowledge while their children tumbled together on grassy slopes. I could hear Ginny's voice in the back of my head, saying 'Hermione, stop dreaming and start doing…' but I couldn't just _stop _as easily as Ginny did. I couldn't stop, not when dreams were all I had left to distract me.

-

_Second Saturday, September_

It is early autumn. The trees are only starting to turn color and shed their coats. Outside my apartment, I can count three scrawny leaves that have fallen on the sidewalk. The milling wizards don't notice it. It takes the imperturbable silence of solitude for these little details to register. When they do, they bloom like lotuses across the vision, until when I look at my table I don't see my books, but their scratched covers, and when I tie my shoes I don't see the laces, but the little scuffs on its side. The minutiae overwhelm me.

'Hermione,' I tell myself, 'you are going insane.'

I spend only eleven hours out of bed now. The rest of it is just dreaming, because in dreams it doesn't matter whether or not I'm insane. In dreams, incoherency is the norm.

I hear a key turning at my door. It's not Ron and I look in my desktop calendar. Ron's name is penciled in on Tuesdays, Ginny's on Fridays, Luna and Neville's on Sundays, and Professor McGonagall on the last day of every month. Professor—I don't know why I still call her that, when Hogwarts has been derelict for more than a decade now. It's too bad that old habits die hard.

A head of pale pink hair pokes into the room. 'Hey, Hermione, you here?'

Tonks. I hadn't seen her in so long. She looked much the same as ever. She hadn't seen me, of course. I shink back and hide my face. 'I'm feeling sick,' I lied. Or perhaps it wasn't a lie, because if I were called anything, sick was at the top of that list.

'I'm sorry to just barge in like this, but Ginny told me you were feeling down and that you haven't been out of this flat in a bloody long time, so I was sent over to—'

'No, really Tonks; I'm fine. I need to take a nap.' She comes down the corridor, and I could hear her Auror boots stomping down my clean wood grain. I scramble under a blanket and cover myself with it.

She takes a look around the room, around the somber furniture and the paper-strewn table, and lets out a long whistle. 'If I didn't know better, I'd think you were the second Remus.' She comes to stand by my bed, next to my huddled form. Her voice is soft when she speaks again. 'This isn't really the type of thing I'm used to, Hermione. But they needed someone cheerful, so I volunteered. I haven't seen you in so long—not until after the Battle, and I think… I know many of the others miss you too.'

'Thanks, Tonks. That means a lot. But I really need to sleep—'

'Don't you think I know when a girl is lying?' She silences me. Gently she pulls off my blanket and gazes at me. I prepare for her flinch, but she merely looks quiet. 'I've seen worse, on the battlefield. Not many, for sure, but definitely worse. There are so many other things that could have happened to you. Be thankful you weren't lost to us.'

I want to throw a biting remark back at her. She keeps talking.

'I remember Hermione. She was a good-natured girl, bright and loyal, and very clever. But she was also intensely logical, idealistic, and optimistic about the future. Where is that? You were once known for your ability to think deeply and rationally, and I don't think that talent's lost. But it's missing.'

She smiles at me, the joyful woman who married Lupin, and handed a hairbrush to me.

'I'm not Ginny; I won't take care of you,' she says. 'But I do care, and I look forward to the day you come visit Remus and me.'

She takes a clear glance at the room around her. She chortles. 'Just as a heads up, now that I've been here, I can come whenever I like.' Then she rises, pulls out her wand, and Disapparated away.

I blinked at the sudden pop in the air and burrowed myself deeper into my bed. But I could hear her voice in my mind, and see her cool appraisal of me in her glance. She was right about me, ultimately. I had been optimistic, even in the Last Days when Harry overstrained himself from stress, had been optimistic at the dawn of the Battle, all the way until I had fallen to my knees in front of Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry had stepped in the way of her curse. He'd gone on to fight Lord Voldemort in his weakened state; I was paralyzed, guilty, struggling, and watching in horror as every spell left him weaker. In a way, he had won by Lord Voldemort's loss, the other dropping to his knees and withering before Harry gave over, he had avenged his parents, avenged Diggory, and avenged the many others who had fallen. But the cost—

Optimism is helpless against the green light. I shrink into my bed and close my eyes.

-

_4__th__ Tuesday, September _

Ron comes again. This time he has Indian food with him in hopes of tempting me out. He puts his takeout right outside the door. I summoned it in with a simple _Accio_. He crossed his arms in front of his chest in frustration. I remembered Tonks.

'I've got agoraphobia, Ron. What am I supposed to do about it?'

'Get over it. I got over agoraphobia, too.'

'You mean arachnophobia.'

'What's the difference?'

I rest my hands in my lap. He did not wait for me, I remembered. He did not stay by me, through it all; he found his own life. I wasn't surprised when he told me he was going to marry Lavender. I wasn't too upset, because I knew I couldn't expect him to keep his promise. Promises made during the Last Days weren't generally kept. Harry had promised then to stay alive. He went back on his word. Breaking a promise made during those days—the short, turbulent two weeks where morning and night blurred together and you're never quite without the presence of Death hanging over you—doesn't make someone a liar. It makes him human.

I wish Harry hadn't been human.

A corner of Ron's robe is frayed. A particularly long thread from it sticks out like a cowlick. I patch it up with a little wand work. Ron feels it and sighs. 'The most talented witch of our generation stuck here, in this dump.' He wants to say that I can't be insane if I can still perform these bits of magic—but he knows my argument. Insanity doesn't impair magical ability. It impairs the human psyche.

I smile, a somewhat bitter residue of regret aching at the back of my throat. 'You're one to talk, considering you live in the Burrow now.'

'Hermione! You haven't been drinking with a Slytherin, have you?'

My patience wears thin. 'Yeah, Malfoy drops buy now and then, and after I fulfill my ardent wish of gutting him with a spork for sixth year, we play poker.' The sarcasm was unlike me. I try to tuck myself away again in my armchair and poke at the curry. Ron pulls my comforter off, and laughs.

His hair is tussled youthfully, but his eyes wrinkle and crease with age. He looks as if he wants to say something, but he doesn't say anything and I appreciate it. I appreciate silence. He's fiddling nervously with his hair, and knowing him as I do, day-in, day-out, for almost twenty years—

'Just come out and tell me.'

He grimaces. 'We found news of them. Athens and Thebes. Most of us are being deployed to the Mediterranean. If we can catch Nott and Parkinson, or even just Pucey, then it'll be a gain on our part. But this means… Well, Lavender insists on going, and Ginny won't be dissuaded and Neville and Dean are like that too…" He coughed uncomfortably, and his rising flush peaked. "So Zabini will be visiting you."

I drop my bowl. It clatters on the floor and the flood spills out, staining the clean wood. 'Z_abini?_ _Blaise Zabini?_' Ron pulls out his wand and clumsily cleans up the mess.

'I know you never trusted him—'

'He's a _Death Eater_.'

'Hermione, you're stuck in the past. There are only _former_ Death Eaters now—without Voldemort, that power is nothing, that magic is just a scar, a burn, a painful tattoo. It's Nott we have to worry about, and Zabini left _Nott_. I have a hard time trusting him myself, but the magic wards inside this apartment is so strong—and he's been stripped of his wand already—not even Neville disagrees.'

'Why not Susan? Or Seamus? Or the twins? Why not Luna?'

Ron rubs his forehead tiredly. 'They're all going down, besides Seamus and backup, but they're all stationed. They don't have time. Zabini is all we have.'

'I don't need anyone—I can get by on my own.' _If Zabini comes in to this place_, I think sourly, _I'll cut him apart._

Ron summons the bowl and laid it on the table. He walks around my room, cracking open a window, adjusting a curtain. I fight the urge to scream; my attention narrows onto the whistling, thin window opening through which the outside world was escaping inside. I glower.

'You can't get by all by yourself for two and a half months,' Ron tells me. He notices that I'm only half listening, and that instead I'm blanched and clutching at my chair, frightened. He hurriedly snaps down the window and locks it. He apologizes.

I breathe slowly, counting. In my mind I see a Time-Turner slowly rotating, and with each dip and turn my heartbeat steadies. 'Ten weeks?' I say finally. Ron is next to me, holding my hand. I notice that my knuckles had turned white with exertion and I loosen my grip; he flinches a little as the blood floods back. 'You'll be gone ten weeks?'

His other hand kneads my shoulder and loosens the tension there. I've missed his touch and I want to lean in; distantly I remember Lavender and the two smiling at each other in their wedding video. I pull away.

'Ten weeks, yeah,' he says, and his voice is jagged. 'And you know it's going to be dangerous.'

'I know.'

'Let Zabini come by, please. I'll owl you, but Ginny and I would feel so much safer about—'

'Yes. He can come by. But only for groceries and errands. I won't accept anything else.'

Ron thanks me, and his eyes murmur that he wants to embrace me before he goes, but he's too afraid to. In the window, I see my reflection speaking to him, and my reflection is his perception of me; small, shrunken, fragile, with spidery thin veins showing on sallow—too sallow—skin, hair harshly, deep imprints under my eyes like kohl smudges, burns and crisscrossing lines swelling across the left side of my face.

I shiver with fear.

'When is the Order going,' I ask him at the door. 'Isn't Lavender too pregnant to go?'

'It's only three months along by now,' he says, adjusting his coat. 'She won't be stopped now. After Parvati was lost… well, I've told you how she's been.' He looked disfigured in the dark; I must have been more alarming to behold.

'We're been deployed, we're gone tomorrow.'

What can I say? The old Hermione would yell at him for not telling her sooner, and perhaps run to her room to cry, but… I nod, and turn away as he opens and shuts the front door.

I slide onto my couch and feed the typewriter another sheet of paper. I begin writing, but I wasn't thinking of the past any longer. Caught in those sore, uneven fingers, weakened, still fighting—I was holding back a deluge. Ron had fondly kissed the top of my head as goodbye. It wasn't the kiss that rankled the most—it was that overwhelming sense of platonic affection he had given me. Reminded once again that he had moved on—that he was starting a family, that what we once had was now fragmented—I let out a quiet sob.


	2. The Foreigner Slytherin

**Ergo, Sum**

-

The Foreigner Slytherin

-

_Final Friday, September_

_We are scratching the underbelly of the heat, raking our fingernails through the aftermath; we are slowly baking, like children we are wrestling against each other over silly convictions. We are Cain and Abel, we are Capulet and Montague, we are Tory and Whig: we embody Voldemort and Harry. We continue the fight, and through this we are letting ourselves decay in a rapidly exacerbating way as we trade punches like Christmas presents._

I hear methodical, sparse knocks at precisely one in the afternoon. Today I have felt good enough to pull back the curtains completely on the floor-length windows in the living room. Glancing up occasionally at the view of variously elevated roofs helps me maintain a steady pace at my typewriter.

He knocks again, this time louder, his knuckles striking wood much the same way as a fighter strikes his foe: systematic, harsh, unrepentant.

I smooth my sweater, take up my wand, and rise. He is just about to knock again when I open the door. Zabini is taller than I remember; stubble covers his dark chin, and his eyes are yawning wide open. I can see every little capillary winding across his cornea. His lips tighten with fear when he recognizes me. I have not seen fear since I moved in—I have not seen my face.

He mutters an apology as he enters, pointedly avoiding looking at my face. Maneuvering inside with his groceries, he neglects to wipe his feet on the doormat. I am mildly irritated when he strides into my living room without cleaning his shoes. I briefly look outside before I close the front door; the foreign blue-green carpet of the corridor sends my heart rattling up my throat. I shut and lock my door.

Zabini is dressed in a Muggle fashion, with a great grey overcoat and a pale scarf; I, irrational as it was, had expected him to be in his old Slytherin outfit, dazzlingly defiant in silver and green. He deposits the groceries on my kitchen counter. 'Which one of these is the pantry,' he asks me, but it sounded more like a command than an inquiry.

'Good afternoon to you too,' I tell him, pointing at a small door next to the stove.

He doesn't have the decency to blush; instead, Zabini snorts under his breath and starts putting the food away. I decide to continue typing, but my glance keeps jumping back to the groceries. "I hate granny smith apples,' I tell him. 'And I don't eat pork or beef.'

Zabini pauses. His dark hair is closely shaved, his wiry body is Olympic in comparison to my wasted muscles. He gives me a strange sidelong look—I imagine he has never even _thought_ of giving up meat. 'Then I guess I'll find something else to do with these,' he says, gesturing to a bag of bloody animal product. I remain on edge, my eyes flitting around the room nervously. My manifesto is still within the typewriter; uncomfortable now, I hastily pull it out of the slot. I store it in my desk and whisper the locking charm, my back to him. When I turn around again, Zabini has gone to the counter and begins pulling out the drawers. He reaches into one and draws out a long, smooth steak knife.

All of a sudden, the world roars. The grey glint of the polished steel in his dark, deft hands sets my head flaming and struck a loud, reverberating din ringing in my ears. It isn't until I'm kneeling on all fours, cowering behind the coffee table, that I notice that Zabini had rushed to my side. 'What the bloody hell?' he demands.

I spring away from him, my eyes flickering from his empty hands to the knife that still lies on the table. There were only four knives in my flat, used primarily for cooking; they were large and wicked. That he is all the way across the room did not soothe me at all; I think with terror of his wand, which hung at his belt, hitched in one of the loops. It would be so easy for him to summon one of those knives… Zabini follows my gaze.

'Your _Weasley_ told me to get them out of your home for now,' he says testily. 'Stupid bint, get back to your work and I'll get back to mine.' He walks over, transfigures the knives into soft, squeaking children's toys with a few shakes of his wand, and drops the toys into his canvas bag.

I resist the urge to hex him. Tightening my hands into fists, I lean on the side of my couch and turn my face fully toward him. He knows I'm staring at him, and I know that I must appear ghastly, all ugly and disfigured, a tangible ghost of the War. Still, he resolutely tucks food away, bringing out fresh bread from the bakery down the street and untouched muggle tea bags. What had it cost him to go _into_ a muggle store and buy that, I wonder.

It takes all of five minutes for him to finish—those were the most excruciating, tense moments of my life. Then he looks up, straight into my face. I notice his attention pushes past _me_ to gaze over my shoulder just before he asks if he could use the bathroom.

'Find your own,' I say in a raw voice, praying it hid my uneasiness with antagonism.

Zambini crosses his arms over his chest. 'Merlin, woman. It's just a piss. I'm not going to curse you with it.'

My whole face burns with embarrassment. "Go, go," I tell him, gesturing toward the hall. 'First door on the left.'

As soon as he'd closed the door behind him, I scamper over to the kitchen, examining all of the drawers and cabinets to make sure he hadn't done anything _unorthodox_. He'd taken his canvas bag with him into the bathroom, so I could not check it. Still, everything I found was perfectly appropriate—fruit, marmalade, scones, some boxed takeout for tonight. He'd gotten me cheese, which I disliked, and the wrong flavor of yogurt, but I can live with that. I wouldn't be able to live with an enchanted bomb tucked in the freezer, though. I glance through every part of the kitchen; by the time I am satisfied, turning around to face the living room, he is back. Blaise Zambini is a hell of a sight, standing in my hallway with a bemused frown.

'I work for your side now,' he says. 'Why would I do anything to you? McGonagall would turn me over to Nott and then I'd have hell to pay. Keep that in your mind before suspecting me of anything.' His voice was highly bitter. My heart drops into my stomach and sloshes around in the acid there. Suddenly, I feel guilty. He moves on quickly, going toward the front door. 'I'll be back in two weeks. No pork, no beef, no granny smith apples, right?'

I nodded. 'I like blueberry and plain yogurt, not pineapple, I hate citrus fruits, and I'd like a little more extra-virgin olive oil.' I become aware of the surrealism of standing in my kitchen, half-harrowed with worry that my ex-enemy would try to sneak a cursed object in to hurt me, while at the same time giving him my food preferences.

'I'll get that to you,' he says, slinging his canvas bag over his shoulder. He leaves hurriedly, with a loud _click_, as if he couldn't bear to spend any more time with me than he had to. Well good—I wouldn't be able to bear spending any more time with him than _I _had to.

I look toward the bathroom, tempted to go in and inspect the environs, but I remember what he said when he found me rising from inspecting the oven in the kitchen. I remember the way he tensed up immediately. Dammit, Hermione, good going. I sigh. The hand of magical clock on the counter shifted to _Reading_, and I let my feet drag me to the bookcase and pick out a muggle book. I'd do anything to forget about the magical world just about then.

-

Dinner is reheated miso soup and teriyaki with rice. I sit by the window and watch the sun set in the sliver of sky between two over-close apartment roofs. Am I brave enough today? I wonder. The rice isn't very good, I tell myself. If it were better, than maybe I would be brave enough. I can hear Harry laughing at me: 'Courage has nothing to do with _rice_, Hermione,' he says in my mind. Edged on by him, I gently unlatch the window and push it up a crack.

The din of the outside world seeps in slowly. I stare fascinated at the thin slot of air where my flat was mingling and blurring with the outside world. I can see the air currents mixing, I imagine. It's gentle but insidious; the outside is carefully and deliberately invading into my home—

My heartbeat steadily increases tempo until the hair stands up perfectly perpendicularly on my arms and I slam the window back down, breathing heavily. Dammit, I tell myself. I wasn't brave enough today. The tears are quick and warm, and cease after a handful of minutes. With them, all the pent-up stress is released, dropping each concentrated dose of panic onto my dinner tray in salty splotches.

A creak in the hardwood flowers rings throughout the flat. I jump away from the window, brandishing my wand at where it originated—the hallway. But when I edge close enough to look into it, there is no one there. No one at all. Apprehension makes me heady; I flip on the light switch and look about. Besides the photo of the Golden Trio hung in the middle of the wall, there is nothing in the hallway.

It must have been my imagination, I tell myself. I give the hallway a lingering once-over before I go back to the soft chair by the window and quickly finish my dinner. I draw the curtains after I'm done, turning on all the muggle lamps, and set my tray in sink. Before I sit back in front of the typewriter, I stand in front of the hallway and look again. I know rationally that it must have just been the building settling, or maybe the groan of my upstairs neighbor traveling through _his_ apartment. Still, I stand there as if waiting for something.

Like before, there really is no one and nothing there. I retire to the loveseat and start typing again, putting it out of my mind.

-

_First Tuesday, October_

There is some poltergeist in my apartment.

That's the conclusion I've come to after furious deliberation. It is either that there is a poltergeist around in my flat, or I have developed multiple personality disorder—and I do not have the latter. I can't; I don't have any instances of "lost time" and everything I've touched is accounted for. There must be a poltergeist in this house.

Not a poltergeist like Peeves—this one is of a different caliber: one much quieter, much craftier, who enjoys playing mind games. It started three days ago, when I set out cookies to cool overnight on a tray overnight, and by Saturday morning, three were gone. I looked all over for mice, mouseholes, anything. There was no one else in the apartment with me, however. Developing multiple personality disorder came to mind; for the first time in a long while, I realized that _I_ might not know me as well I thought I did.

The fear rendered me speechless for several hours. That night, however, I tied myself to my bed with magic after setting out baked goods on the table. I woke in the same position as I slept, my muscles aching. The baked goods had not been touched, but someone had drank about two glasses worth of wine I'd kept tucked away for special purposes. I found the bottle corked on the table and put it away with my hands shaking near uncontrollably.

It could not have been me. In no instances could it have been me. I hated wine—that was why I only had one medium bottle.

So here I sit, staring down my hallway. I have turned on every light, latched every window, and pulled tight the curtains. From here in my bedroom, in the chair I have dragged from by the window to place in front of my door, ignoring the scuffs I've just made from on my floor—from here I sit and watch. When I see the poltergeist, when I see what rat bastard weaseled his way into my airtight and warded flat, my wand will be put to the heaviest use it's had since… since the War.

No one has invaded my apartment like this before. And I will not stand for it.

-

There is no one. It cannot be my imagination but there is no one. After three and a half hours of fruitless waiting, I gave up and went to the kitchen to brew tea. I passed through the hall and let my fingers trail on the walls and the paintings. Gently, I turned the antique knob on the spare bedroom-slash-library. It has been relatively untouched; a visible layer of dust covers everything. I pointed my wand inside and murmured, "_Scourgify_." Each book—the ones on the bookshelves as well as stacked on the floor haphazardly—brightened. The windows were carefully scrubbed, the floor lay gleaming.

After I pulled out a couple books to read—muggle and magical alike—I locked the room behind me.

The other door—the one to the bathroom—I knew I could not lock. It was a small room, claustrophobic, almost, with a tiny shower and a tiny sink and a tiny yellow ceramic toilet. The dark blue tiles were passably clean, but overwhelmed the entire room, scaling all the way up to the ceiling and darkening the bathroom. The fact that the sole lightbulb was tiny, weak, and flickered erratically only made the room more disconcerting to be in.

I opened the tap and watched the water flow out, rusty at first and then running clearer and clearer in an unsteady stream. It curled into the drain; I couldn't detect any residue of magic in the water, nor in the piping. The poltergeist had not come through the plumbing system.

I chuckled a little at my paranoia. A poltergeist through the drainage system? What was I thinking…. As I turned off the tap, I knocked over my hairbrush to the ground; it made a dull clattering noise on the tiles. Even the sounds of this room are muted—my bathroom, I grinned despite myself, was stifling. But as I picked it up, a dark mass between the bathroom counter and the wall caught my eye. My breath snagged; I drew the object out from its hiding place, and almost immediately dropped it.

It was a mirror.

Surprisingly, it didn't shatter. A shiver of fear passing down my neck, I bent over and picked it up again, not daring to take a good look at it. I ran out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind me.

There is no one. It cannot be my imagination but there is no one. And there is nothing, except for this mirror. This hand-mirror, about the size of my two palms put side-by-side, set in some intricate bronze-hued metal with a long handle beveled with runes.

I do not have any mirrors in my apartment; I cannot have any mirrors in my apartment.

The only one who has been here recently who may have brought in a mirror is Zambini.

Oh, Merlin's Beard!

It must be an enchanted mirror. It is too ornate to be a Muggle-manufactured mirror, and though I can barely make out the runes, they glimmer of power.

Gently, I tip it towards me. Its surface reflects the ceiling at first, then the window behind me. I take a good look inside, watching the twilight pour itself over the roofs of this London street, settling its gray-blue darkness into the nooks and crannies of the outside world, filtering itself into my apartment. I take a deep breath, and slowly angle the mirror so that my face comes into view.

I've seen outlines of myself reflected in windows and in pools of water, but never with the biting clarity of a mirror. There it is, my tough hair, highlighted by long gray threads. Then my forehead, with the raised scars of Lestrange's curse running down from my temple over my nose and the side of my cheek. The burned lower portion of my jaw. The pits near my nostril, and the long closed up scar of where Lucius Malfoy had cut me with a curved dagger, from my chin upwards, fading near my eye. I am lucky I can still see—I am lucky he missed my eye.

I look like a Gorgon. Too shell-shocked to cry or even to scream, I can't pull my eyes way from the horror that I realize has to be me. Ugly, monstrous, fearsome… I hate my face with burning ferocity that I hadn't felt since the War. Every little treasured dream of my youth is shriveling; I could never be the Hermione my friends knew again. _This _is not the Hermione they had known.

My reflection began to slowly smooth over. I watched in fascination as the enchanted mirror carefully erases the battle-scored skin and gives it a pale, ivory sheen. Then, in horror, I realize my reflection is being converted to the reflection of someone else: the hair shortening and lightening, the eyes misting over, suffusing blue into brown until a strange striking gray set in, the nose lengthening, the chin sharpening, the jaw narrowing, the lips tightening.

Recognition strikes me over the head like a persistent hammer steadily growing in strength; I know this face.

Draco Malfoy is in the mirror.


End file.
